Meet the Old School Ford Transit: Throwback Thursday

Transit has long been a popular option overseas with a variety of configurations for the working world.

This week’s Throwback Thursday video comes to us from the Conniptions886 YouTube channel and it features a commercial for the Ford Transit in the 1960s. Although we didn’t get the big van until 2015 in the United States, the many forms of the classic van made it a popular commercial vehicle as far back as the mid-1960s.

The Original

The first Ford Transit was introduced to the European market back in 1965, but it was 50 years until it would be sold at dealerships in the United States. The Transit came to the US to replace the old E-Series vans in 2015, and while the shift to this new design came as a shock to Americans, it made sense for Ford.

The Transit had spent the first half-century of its existence shining in the European market, appealing to a wide variety of commercial buyers — and this classic commercial from the mid-1960s shows why.

The Many Faces

In this unusual ad, the deep-voiced narrator quietly introduces us to each member of the first generation Ford Transit family. We see the lightest-weight traditional van, a chassis cab truck with a flat bed and two more examples of the van in different weight ratings.

As we can see, each vehicle appears to be doing a job and like so many classic commercial vehicles, the Transit had the sliding rear door that allowed for better air flow when on the move and easier entry for the delivery man on the go.

Ford of Europe continues offering a variety of configurations of the van today and several of those have joined the American lineup as well.

Today, U.S. buyers can pick the big van, the chassis cab or the compact version – known as the Transit Connect – but it all started with the original European van back in the 1960s.